How We Met: Joanna Lumley & Jill Tookey

'I once refused a scholarship at the Royal Ballet, so there was quite a frisson going back'

(ANNIE COLLINGE)

Jill Tookey MBE, 73, founded the National Youth Ballet in 1988. The company involves talented young dancers from all over the country in every aspect of creating and staging a ballet, as well as encouraging children from all walks of life to become involved. A trained dancer, Tookey is the company's executive and creative director. She lives in Kent

I knew Joanna first as a model in the early 1960s when I was a fashion editor, but it was much later that we met properly, when I wrote a children's book and had the idea to turn it into a ballet for young dancers. The composer who wrote the score was a friend of Joanna's husband [the composer Stephen Barlow] and had told her what I was doing. She was so enthusiastic that he brought her to one of our performances at Sadler's Wells.

Joanna is as lovely as she seems. We share a passion for dance and I love her enthusiasm – for what we do with the National Youth Ballet and in general.

After the performance, I nervously wrote to ask her to be a patron and she accepted. I'm not one to have a name on a piece of paper for the sake of it, so Joanna was perfect; she gets her hands dirty. She's fantastic at drawing, for example, so always has great ideas about sets and costumes.

In the early days, I asked her to come to an event we were doing with the kids. She rang me and said, "I'm not going to come, Jill, because they'll just stick a picture of me on the cover of The Daily Mail and they won't photograph the kids." I remember being a bit disappointed, but she was right – and we ended up getting a huge picture of one of the little ones in the paper. She's not interested in the limelight for the sake of it.

It has been 20 years now and she has become a friend. We meet mainly at galas and first-night performances, but I like the times when we can talk without everybody around watching her or taking pictures.

The last time we were all together socially was when my husband was really ill and knew he was dying. Joanna was just herself – chatting away to him all evening, and that was lovely for both of us, because so many people didn't know how to be.

From the lowest to the highest, Joanna makes no distinctions about who she is speaking to, which is so endearing. She is a great conversationalist, as it's never all about her. She makes others feel charming. It's funny to watch men's reactions to her. They fall at her feet – certainly my sons and even my little grandsons.

Joanna Lumley OBE. 64, is a former model, but is best known for TV roles in 'The New Avengers' and 'Absolutely Fabulous'. She regularly campaigns on behalf of human-rights organisations. She lives in south London with her husband

Around 1990 I went to a performance at Sadler's Wells with the late composer Alan Ridout, a wonderful man who taught my husband composition. It was a children's ballet called Fisherboy and Alan had written the score. I have been in love with ballet for as long as I can remember, so I thought, "How wonderful to drive the composer to the opening night!" When I was 10, I was offered a scholarship at the Royal Ballet and refused – because I was an airhead – so there was quite a frisson going back.

I recognised straight away that Jill comes from that disciplined mould of all dancers that I admire. They don't waste time or energy. There's no sloppiness in anything she does. I was very impressed by her, by the children and the ballet itself.

When she asked me to be patron, I ran my name down the list of other patrons and they had all these fantastic dancers, Monica Mason and Wayne Sleep, and I suppose I hoped the fairy dust might flake off on me a little.

I like Jill on the night of a big performance – she has to be everything and she is so calm, cool and collected. We see each other mainly for ballet-related events, but it's been so regular and for so long that we have slowly got to know each other well. I've met her sons and grandson and I knew her husband – it was agony when he went, but she is terribly brave.

I like Jill's ambition – nothing is too grand or complicated to attempt. She is so hands-on; she does everything: costume design, stage design. Look at her productions and you'd think there must be legions working on them, but so much of it is just her.

Jill is, as you'd expect, brilliant with children, but not in a "coochy-coo" way. She doesn't talk down to them and she expects great things from them, but they adore her for it. She is a Ninette de Valois [founder of the Royal Ballet] figure – you know, "madam" – for whom all the kids have great respect and affection. I love seeing children work hard like that – little children really striving is impressive.

She can be very shy about speaking in public and is absurdly modest, but people like Jill are so important to this country, now more than ever. We seem to have kicked the arts into the bushes in terms of the school curriculum, so music lessons and ballet classes become more and more elitist. Jill is extraordinarily tenacious when it comes to keeping this company together. And on a selfish, personal level, I'm grateful to Jill because in a way she's allowed me to salvage a childhood dream.

The National Youth Ballet performs 'Rainbow Bear', based on Michael Morpurgo's children's book and narrated by Joanna Lumley, at Kent's EM Forster Theatre from Thursday to Saturday, and on 5 September at the London Palladium Theatre (nyb.org.uk)